I picked up the Wall Street Journal –

Europe edition recently and came across an article that discussed fake raids designed to build street cred for Iraqis working with or receiving assistance from the US Military.

See, if you are the U.S. Army, you need to keep tabs on the distribution of rebuilding funds but you can’t tell anyone who is receiving funds lest the “bad” guys find out and blow up the place. So what do you do? You stage stage fake raids looking for imaginary insurgents.

This kind of crap is what passes for success in the minds of our Western New York Congressman when they vote to continue the failed Iraq policies of their Republican party. We can thank Congressman Kuhl, Congressman Walsh and Congressman Reynolds for helping to sustain this war.

A war where fake raids are needed because they provide fake arrests which gives credibility to a select few because they aren’t seen as working with the Americans. Geez, it is that successful arrest every single Iraqi and we can leave now.

You can read the article by Yochi J Dreazen here or the excepts below - all emphasis is mine.

Remember since we need to keep the

US role a secret lest the “bad” guys blow up the business. The Iraqi bosses who are receiving aid can’t tell anyone. So, fake raids, throwing people on the ground and doing what is required to make it “real” certainly can’t be endearing the unknowing Iraqi population.

Originally read in the Wall Street Journal Europe edition (March 23-25 edition) but it is behind a subscription service so you can see the entire article here.

NEAR TIKRIT,

Iraq — In one of the oddest raids of the war in

Iraq, a convoy of U.S. Humvees rolled to a stop outside a small printing plant here one afternoon late last month. Twenty

U.S. soldiers in dark goggles moved through the two-story building with assault rifles, forcing the plant’s workers against an outside wall for questioning, then conducting a room-by-room search. Because an office door was locked, the soldiers radioed Army Capt. Dan Cederman, who was leading the raid, to ask whether they should knock it down. “I told them that would kind of defeat the purpose,” Capt. Cederman recalls. “We’d have just had to come back out the next day to fix it.” The strike, after all, wasn’t meant to find insurgents or weapons. Its real purpose was to covertly measure the progress of U.S.-financed renovations to the company’s offices.

Ok – As the next paragraph says (read the article yourself) we are inspecting whether or not our tax dollars are being spent wisely in the hope that creating jobs that will keep people out of the insurgency. OK – conceptually I’m with you. However, that ship has sailed when our CPA engaged non-Iraqis to rebuild the country. Remember how we couldn’t use Iraqi truck drivers? We needed to bring in guys from Alabama? Haliburton anyone? But I digress.

But given the hostility toward the

U.S., officials aren’t advertising their role. “The only way things will work is if the

U.S. contribution is totally invisible,” says Maj. Christina Nagy, a civil-affairs officer from the 82nd Airborne Division. “I have people with higher ranks than me always wanting to have a ribbon cutting. I just listen and think, ‘Sure, if you want the companies to get immediately shot or blown up.’”

Sounds like the Generals are looking for good publicity - OK . Well the article continues about an Iraqi named Dr Noori who approached the Americans about funding the rebuilding of a textile factory. The Americans did but needed to ensure their money was wisely spent. So the

US launched a fake raid on the factory. Ensuring no one was hurt and no property was damaged. Here is an account of the raid.

The American soldiers took all the employees into one room and told them they were looking for a specific Iraqi suspected of ties to the insurgency. During the mock interrogations, a second team of soldiers quietly made its way through the plant to take photographs and check the pace and quality of renovations. Dr. Noori says several workers told him after the raid how frightened they had been. That convinced him that it had come off as authentic. The soldiers, meanwhile, say they were able to verify that the

U.S. money had been used appropriately. The ruse worked so well that Capt. Cederman decided to carry out a similar raid last month at the printing plant here that had been fixed up with

U.S. funds. The Iraqi assistant director of the plant requested the strike, telling the Americans it would help persuade the insurgents to leave him and his workers alone, Capt. Cederman says. The company prints recruiting posters for the Iraqi military and police, as well as an independent daily newspaper.

Then there is this raid on a printing plant

The strike began shortly after 1 p.m. on Feb. 22. The security guard recognized Capt. Cederman’s Humvees as the vehicles drove into the compound, and came over to greet the troops. The soldiers responded by ordering him to put his hands in the air and then lie flat on the ground, participants in the raid say. “He kept saying, ‘Welcome, welcome,’” Master Sgt. John Craig recalls. “I was like, ‘Get the f- down on the floor.’ It had to look real.” After the guard was disarmed and searched, the soldiers ordered the four workers who were in the building to come out and line up against an outside wall. Speaking through a female translator dressed in military fatigues, Capt. Cederman and his soldiers told the workers that they were looking for an insurgent rumored to be in the plant.

Then there is this bit of how to help an

Iraq by arresting him and holding him in Jail.

An Iraqi who worked as a translator for

U.S. forces there was getting death threats from insurgents and asked the

U.S. for help. The Americans responded by raiding his house, publicly arresting him, and holding him in jail for two days.

“A lot of people there now think he’s a bad guy,” Capt. Cederman says. “It bought him a lot of street cred.”

Yep, Fake raids, real raids - what is the difference when you are an unknowing population getting burst in on, yelled at, tied up and then released. Yep, We are giving out a lot of street cred.

If this is an example of what passed for success I hate to see failure. What to see failure see it here. Read the accounts in the right column. Really read them.

Yep, Sounds like since we didn’t find any rose pedals, we are growing our own rose bushes - just the thorn part.

Time to go.